


Nothing so Cruel

by jamestiqueeriuskirk



Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Anal Sex, Awkward Kissing, Bad Flirting, Banter, Bodice-Ripper, Bottom Loki (Marvel), Childhood Friends, Come Eating, Courting Rituals, Cultural Differences, First Kiss, First Meetings, First Time, Flirting, Friends to Lovers, Growing Up, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Interspecies Relationship(s), Interspecies Romance, Jotunn Loki (Marvel), M/M, Playful Rough Sex, Puppy Love, References to Norse Religion & Lore, Reunions, Rimming, Rough Sex, Snapshots, Spanking, Strength Kink, Temperature Play, Top Thor (Marvel), but our heroine has intentionally loosened the seams of his bodice so its super easy to rip
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-18
Updated: 2018-05-18
Packaged: 2019-05-08 18:16:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,194
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14699622
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jamestiqueeriuskirk/pseuds/jamestiqueeriuskirk
Summary: Loki gasped and arched beneath him. His erection nudged Thor’s. “I thought the berserkr rage was just a myth.”“I have my wits about me, still,” Thor told him. He also thought the berserkr rage was just a myth, but if anyone could rouse it from legend to possess Thor, it would be Loki.“Well, lose them,” Loki demanded, flipping their position and raining blows upon Thor’s chest.-A story where Loki is too extra to just come right out and say he wants Thor to slap him around a little so he pretends to be old-fashioned and makes Thor face him in the ritual combat of traditional Jotun courtship before he'll put out.





	Nothing so Cruel

**Author's Note:**

> So, this is my first time writing a Jotun!AU, which I guess means I'm a real thorki author now.
> 
> This is, also, my most liberal perversion of Norse mythology yet, and while I didn't do it any dirtier than Marvel already has, I definitely made mincemeat out of the Lokasenna. Weirdly, I feel bad about making Skade Asgardian instead of Jotun and giving explicit in-text confirmation that Loki is smaller than the other frost giants. In the myths, Jotun are just like, however the fuck tall, anything from Loki-sized to a mile high, and I always kinda thought that if I wrote a Jotun!AU I would worldbuild like that, but it didn't fall into place that way.

It was Thor’s first venture off Asgard, and questions had been spilling out of him since the Bifrost put them down outside the gates of the royal family of Alfheimr’s summer palace.

His father bore them all with patience, answering sometimes so thoroughly that Thor grew weary of the explanations he received and flitted on to another question.

His boundless curiosity was a bit of an impediment to the All-father’s strategic circulating about the room of the party, but most of the guests it collided with seemed to find it charming. No surprise, really – everyone found Thor charming, and realizing that had been, for good and ill, one of his earliest lessons.

He saw many new things throughout the night, most of which delighted in his curiosity, but one of which did not.

It was his first time seeing Jotnar in anything other than a textbook, and he had never paid much attention in such lessons – Jotunheimr and Asgard were no longer at war, had not been for some time and were unlikely to be again, what interest did Thor have in Jotnar? – but he was quite sure he knew enough about their biology to be justified wondering about the nature of the being with them that carried their markings on a frame smaller than Thor’s own.

“What is that, father?” Thor whispered as the Jotnar party trooped past them, the smallest one trailing on their heels, though keeping a valiant stride with their long steps, given the allowances that must be made.

The tiny Jotun twirled on Thor. “A being with ears just as good as yours and a better hand for sorcery besides! Speak so clumsily again and the words will be your last for a while, Odinson! I’ll spell your throat shut; I’ve just learned the incantation.”

Thor blushed fiercely, enraged and something else as well, something he was still too young to have a real name for.

But before he could give the little Jotun an angry shove, one of his own party rounded on him. This Jotun was more average-sized, for his kind – though, Thor thought, still adolescent – and he plucked his tiny companion up into the air by his cape and held him there, flailing, for admonishment.

“Loki!” He barked. “Speaking like that to the crown prince of Asgard, and in front of Odin All-father? You don’t know when to stay your words, and you’re going to cause an interstellar incident one day. Father says you’re going to be a great diplomat, but no one else is fooled! Your tongue is clever, but wicked, and it will never serve any master but your own whims.”

Loki grabbed his brother’s wrist – for this second giant must have been an elder brother – and hoisted himself up, like upon a bar in the training yard, and bit the flesh of his hand.

The giant howled and dropped Loki, but the slippery, little creature vanished into thin air before he could make disastrous impact with the marble floor.

Thor gasped. “Can you do that, father?”

The All-father knew everything there was of seidr, had gone traveling through the tangles of Yggdrasil and come back all-knowing, or so it was said, but Thor had never seen his father practice any sort of magic as impressive as that. In fact, his father rarely used magic at all.

“Quiet, boy,” his father grumbled, shoving him into the hands of one of their Einherjar escort before greeting the party of Jotnar formally and allowing Loki’s apologetic brother to smooth things over.

-

The night dragged on so late that even the excitement of being allowed up after his bedtime and given a sip or two of wine from his father’s goblet had worn off a long time ago.

A bored Thor was quite a destructive Thor, and he was visiting his destruction on the palace garden. He suspected the flower bushes – native to Alfheimr, must have been, for Thor had never seen any like them before, and his mother kept a careful patch of everything that could grow on Asgard in her own royal gardens – had never before had to endure anything like his campaign, because they were already in a pretty sorry state from only some mild trampling.

“What sort of penalty do you think the Elves inflict on off-worlders who damage the sacred, royal flowerbeds?”

Thor turned to find Loki perched on the edge of the fountain behind him. The question sounded honest, not rhetorical – Loki was really wondering, not waiting to tell Thor – but it also sounded as if he was hoping the answer was sordid.

Thor scoffed at him, inflated by his usual bravado even though the Jotun’s words were meant to be his cue to worry. He felt he must put up a brave face in front of him and impress him – the need to do so burned strangely. Of course, it should not be so hard. Everyone was impressed by Thor.

“They wouldn’t dare punish the son of Odin!” he said, and in his mind, this was true. It could not be any other way.

“No?” asked Loki, standing and stalking towards Thor, who foolishly didn’t think to make a tactical retreat from his dangerous path. He felt his surety slip – and this would not be the last time Loki turned Thor’s world on its head: neither knew it, then, but they had a lot of that waiting in their shared future. “You’re not a great student of history, are you, Odinson? One of your father’s cousins was executed by a lady of Alfheimr for failing to bow low enough to her. I doubt they’ve retired the practice yet. It’s only been two thousand years.”

Thor gulped. “Really?” he asked, trying to sound curious only.

Loki laughed, and the sound was genuine, not nice but not so malicious that Thor didn’t enjoy it. “No. I’m not such a great student of history, either, but I am a very good liar.” It was a brag, though not one anyone else Thor knew would have made.

Thor was confused between relief and affront at being lied to, so his mouth, not knowing what to do, just fell open dumbly.

“Oh,” Loki said, giggling. “You should see the look on your face.”

It was enough like a compliment – the bristly Jotun prince was enjoying Thor, was he not? Never mind he laughed at him, not with – that Thor relaxed a little.

“So, what are you a great student of?” Thor didn’t think he had ever asked anyone to talk about their studies, but he didn’t want Loki to go, and Thor liked to talk about himself, why shouldn’t Loki feel the same?

“Seidr, mostly,” Loki said. “And diplomacy, though my marks with those tutors aren’t half so good.”

“Can you show me some of your tricks?”

“They’re not ‘tricks,’ Odinson. Don’t underestimate what I can do just because you can’t also.” A golden apple of Idunn’s orchards appeared in Loki’s palm. Thor reached for it, and found it solid, no illusion.

“Where did you get that?” he asked Loki.

“Your pocket,” Loki said, taking a generous bite and offering the rest to Thor.

Thor accepted his stolen property back and munched into it.

“Can you show me how it works?”

“Yes; can you understand the process?”

Thor tittered. “Of course.”

Thor could not, as it turned out – for he had been neglecting his own magic lessons, and had quite forgotten the building blocks of the practice that Loki assumed he knew, and he refused to ask for basic review, lest Loki laugh at him again – but he sat with Loki for what must have been another hour – a long time, indeed, at their age – and allowed the little Jotun to call him an oaf and a thickhead and some far more hurtful words, as well, every time he ventured a stupid question about the mechanics.

The party guests eventually began trickling out into the gardens around them, retiring to the guest villas on the other side of the enormous lawn.

Loki’s older brothers came for him first, and they bade one another a good night.

-

The next day, Thor caught Loki at a game of hide-and-chase. They’d played a few rounds, already, and none of the young members of Alfheimr’s royal family who played with them had been able to find Loki, much less catch him – he turned into trees and bushes to hide and squirrels and small fowl to run – so Thor knew he wanted him to catch him.

Thor wasn’t quite sure what to do with him when he did, though. He tried to kiss Loki, and Loki rubbed his face into the dirt.

Thor gave chase to him again and that time, when he apprehended him, he dunked him in the ornamental fish pond, and they attended the night’s dinner party dirty and wet, and commiserated from across the room when their respective escorts chewed them out for their sorry state.

-

They were lying in the grass under Asgard’s night sky, having escaped the duties expected of them as hosting and visiting princes – something both their families were quite used to, by now, though it still managed to exasperate – and the entertainment of explaining her constellations to Loki had quite run out for Thor, especially once he began to ask such deep, probing questions about their mythology that Thor couldn’t answer.

“What was that awful thing you tried to force on me when you dragged me out of the bushes, when we first met?” Loki asked after a brief silence. For a moment, Thor didn’t know what he could mean. It had been years ago when they’d met. Hadn’t he pushed Loki? Loki said something to provoke him, that was a sure bet, even though he couldn’t remember what it had been. And the next day, hadn’t Loki pressganged him into pranking the kitchen staff of the Jarl hosting them? No, that had been their second meeting, at a trade summit on Vanaheimr. “Do you remember? When we played chase and you pinned me to the ground and scrunched up your lips against my face.”

“You—you mean Jotnar don’t kiss?” Thor asked, hot with embarrassment.

They had a very long while yet to go before they were men, but they were old enough that Thor prickled to be called a child. And so, he was in a spot such that he was old enough that the reminder he’d once tried to _kiss_ Loki made him squirm, but not _quite_ old enough that he wanted to do it again, though such a time would come for him, yet.

“No, what is it for?”

“It’s a way to express… _affection_.”

Loki rolled onto his side. “Then, shall we do it again?”

Thor’s face burned. “ _Romantic_ affection,” he clarified, completely mortified. He put his hands over his face so he didn’t have to look at Loki and Loki couldn’t look at him.

It simply didn’t occur to him that Loki’s ignorance was pretend, and his interest in a repeat performance conscious.

At his age, there was nothing worse among his training yard compatriots than to have it insinuated you felt romantic attraction to another, or another felt romantic attraction to you, and such a grave insult to the reputation was always avenged. Thor expected, at the least, a slug to the arm for his long-past _transgression._

But Loki only laughed and laughed his way into a coughing fit.

-

Thor was almost old enough that his father was going to allow him to visit Midgard, next time he went, and Thor was excitedly drinking in the tales his older cousin Skade had about the trips she’d already taken.

“They already worship me as a goddess of winter,” she bragged, and all the lads – Asgardian and otherwise – listening were thoroughly impressed.

Save one.

“And how did you fool them into granting you such high esteem?” Loki asked, lounging a way’s off from the group, but commanding enough that he didn’t even need to raise his voice to steal Skade’s show. “It must have been some trick.”

“No _tricks_ , Laufeyjarson,” Skade said. “We don’t all have to cheat our way into things. I simply impressed them with my mastery of the elements.”

“Oh? Show me.”

One of the nicer fountains in the garden became their first casualty, for when she froze the water in it, the stone cracked apart.

“Ha!” Loki laughed, tossing his head back theatrically. It wasn’t much like the way he _really_ laughed, when he was being _true_ – Thor had seen and heard that, and he suspected few others had. “Any novice seidrmadr could do that. Maybe _I_ should go to Midgard and be worshipped as a greater and more powerful god.”

It wasn’t Jotnar custom to do so, like it was the Aesir and Vanir royal families’, but Loki wasn’t much for tradition or rules, and Thor didn’t see why he couldn’t.

Skade did. “No one would ever worship you, you ugly, little snake!” she yelled, her infamous temper inflamed.

It was, perhaps, impolite of Skade to say, but it was more impolite of Loki to retaliate by conjuring up just such an animal and setting it on her.

The boys watching scattered to continue from a safer distance as Skade danced around the serpent nipping at her ankle before she managed to get a strike in and punt it back at its creator, who scrambled back to avoid it, right into the captain of the Vanir capital city-guard, who had come to see what the commotion was, and didn’t looked pleased by the answer.

-

At the beginning of the night, Thor would have said these things were always frightfully boring, but now he knew better, and could say they were only _most often_ frightfully boring.

Loki was back, and the years he’d spent grounded had not cooled his heels at all.

Thor was now, finally, a man – and Loki was, as well, though only barely, for the Jotnar came of age under their law later than the Aesir under theirs – and he had had much experience in the interim, and he knew what it was to want, so he knew what to call the flame that sparked back to life in his belly when Loki winked at him from across the room.

He was with Njord, and they were already deep into a conversation, for Loki was in the middle of telling the man he’d just met his son, Freyr, and thought the boy was a delight.

“He bears a very close resemblance to your sister, my lord. Almost in equal part as he bears to you. Of course, that’s a fine thing; your sister is a very lovely woman, is she not?”

Oh, not good. Funny, and perhaps deserved – for what Loki implied was, to Thor’s knowledge, true: an open secret in the Vanir court – but not good. Before the Vanir lord could process Loki’s insinuation and Loki face consequences for making it, Thor butted in and clapped Loki hard on the back. His vigor created a commotion enough, but it wasn’t faked. He was very happy to see his old friend.

Njord wandered off to let them have their reunion.

“Thor, son of Odin,” Loki said. He’d grown up to be very sharp, indeed, and his tongue had clearly followed suit.

He was wearing his hair long, tamed into a straight shock, and he’d traded the cloth of Jotun childhood for the layered robes of Jotun sorcery. He smiled a crooked, familiar smile that did crooked, unfamiliar things to Thor’s stomach.

“Loki Laufeyjarson!” Thor boomed. “We have much catching up to do.”

“Get in line, Thor,” Loki said, laughing. He snatched two goblets of spiced wine from a passing waiter and handed one to Thor. “I’ve been away long, and there are so many with whom I would speak. Maybe you can help me? Where is your delightful cousin? We didn’t leave off on good terms; I must smooth things over with her and offer my condolences for the death of her father.”

He might do the second, as a vehicle for some specially-crafted insult, but he certainly wouldn’t do the first, if allowed to talk long enough. Thor shook his head at him, not sure they were still close enough for his exasperation to be as fond as it was. “Have you learned nothing?”

“Oh, Thor, I’ve learned lots and lots. This time around I’ll magic up a massive serpent with poisonous fangs, great enough to bite her head off in one go.”

Thor laughed. He didn’t see that rematch ending well for Loki. “Why do you do this?”

“How else am I meant to take my pleasure, Odinson?” he asked. The playful quirk of his eyebrow seemed to invite suggestion.

“I can think of a few ways,” Thor said, glancing around.

“I’ll wager none of them are terribly creative.”

Well, maybe not, but no one else had ever had cause to complain.

“Your reputation precedes you, son of Odin – tales of your exploits even reached my monastic prison.”

And Thor opened his mouth to assure Loki it was well-deserved, and Loki would enjoy himself if he sampled, but Loki was already turning from Thor, rounding on another guest, saying, “Bragi! I hear the border skirmishes calmed down before your company had a chance to ship out! How fortunate for you! Of course, now none of us will ever know how you would have fared in the battle; I surely don’t believe those who say you’d be quick to surrender or run, but they still talk, and this has only inflamed them—”

-

At their next meeting, Loki graciously gave them the chance to catch up properly.

They talked long into the night, Thor telling stories of the glorious battles he’d been in – occasionally falling short when Loki asked for clarification on the politics that led him there – while Loki listened indulgently, stroking his ego (and, a few times, without comment, his thigh under the table).

(He was a bit surprised, actually, how much he managed to impress Loki, for he knew Loki preferred mind over matter, but his old friend seemed very excited by Thor’s account of the way he had fought off a giant tall as a mountain with just his bare hands.)

And then they switched, and Thor suspected that, in less capable hands, Loki’s tales of studying advanced magic whilst cloistered away in the temple at Jotunheimr’s North Pole might have been boring.

The flirtation was heavy, and the signals were strong, but they were mixed, so after a few flagons of ale, Thor asked outright.

He leaned close to Loki and kept his voice low. “Do you want to go back to my rooms?”

“Oh, Thor, that wouldn’t be proper at all.”

It wouldn’t – the banquet was not yet over – but that wasn’t an answer to the question Thor asked. If anything – for Loki hadn’t changed much – it suggested he did want to ditch the banquet. There was real delight with the fake scandal in his voice.

“I don’t care much about propriety,” Thor assured him.

“And I like that about you.”

But not enough, it seemed, not to turn away from Thor and ask Tyr how his harvest fared this year, which created a very boring conversation that Thor suspected Loki only enjoyed because he’d entrapped Thor into it along with himself.

-

A playboy prince of Vanaheimr was giving a party, and there wasn’t going to be anyone over sixteen hundred attending, and Loki was sure to cut loose there.

As soon as Thor walked through the doors of the manor he was assaulted by loud music – both musicians playing and drunken revelers shouting tavern songs, not particularly in time with the instrumental – and several people offering him a shot of pungent, Elvish flower-liquor, so he had a few. He warily turned down the opium. Maybe later.

He was many times distracted from finding Loki, so his circuit of the house took a long time, but he eventually completed it, and began to worry Loki had not come before remembering to check the gardens.

It was dark out there, and somewhat quieter. There was a cluster of people on the patio, a smattering of couples studding the hedges, and one lone, sought-after figure relaxing in the pool.

“Mind if I join you?” he asked Loki, already stripping.

“No, but I wouldn’t, if I were you.”

Too late: Thor got in and began to shiver violently. It wasn’t really the weather for this.

“It’s freezing,” he complained.

“I tried to warn you.”

“You didn’t do a very good job of it!” Thor protested.

“You didn’t give me much opportunity for better,” Loki pointed out.

Thor shook his head and tried swimming a lap to warm up, but quickly lost interest, gave up, and waded back over to Loki, partly because it wasn’t working, partly because he could have sworn he caught appreciation in the way Loki appraised his bare arms.

He settled on the step beside Loki, his shivering having become violent on the walk over. “How can you stand—?” He realized the question was stupid halfway through and aborted it, but Loki guessed what Thor meant to ask and laughed at him.

“This is nothing to me,” he said, still smiling. “But if you cannot handle it, feel free to take your leave of me.”

“I’d rather take my leave with you,” Thor said. “Why don’t you come inside and help me warm up?”

Loki laughed again. “I don’t think that would work.”

He brushed Thor’s cheek fondly with his cold hand. It was overly familiar, for friends, and Thor enjoyed it very much, but it didn’t linger, and Thor became suddenly serious.

“Loki,” he said gravely. “If you aren’t interested, you only need tell me to stop. We will remain friends.”

“You’re very persistent.” It wasn’t praise, just as it was no answer, but it wasn’t quite cutting in tone and it safely wasn’t a complaint.

“I’m not used to being turned down,” Thor admitted ruefully. It made him entitled, maybe, he was aware it was incriminating. He felt chagrined, less like a spoiled brat and more like a puppy that had been shoved off its master’s lap and really did not have the capacity to understand why.

Loki would have been in the right to correct him, though that wasn’t particularly what he’d done.

“Then I’m doing you a favor,” Loki said sweetly, and rose and got out of the pool and walked off, leaving Thor blindsided and shot through with a new emotion more dear and close than lust.

And very cold.

-

“I’m genuine, you know,” Thor said grasping Loki’s hand in farewell. They stood in the doorway, ready to go their separate ways. It was the very early morn, and the servants were trying to usher stragglers out of the house so they might begin cleaning before their hungover master rose and wanted breakfast.

“You haven’t given me any reason to believe that.” But Thor also had not given him any reason to doubt! “And I’m not easy to convince.”

Those were Loki’s parting words, but Thor was quite sure that Loki meant to leave the _but you’re welcome to try_ hanging in the air behind him.

-

Loki wasn’t in the stands, watching the tourney. Thor found him beneath them, nose in a book.

Loki finished the entirety of a chapter – a whole chapter! And not a brief one! Though maybe he just wanted to see if Thor would wait; whether rising to the challenge made Thor a fool or the victor, he’d done it – before he unwrapped the package Thor had dropped at his feet.

“What is this?” Loki asked, pulling forth the shirt and turning it over in his hands.

Thor grinned triumphantly. “A tunic of finest Asgardian silk.”

“And you want me to wear it, but only so that I might immediately take it off again for you. Silly courting gift.”

Alright, Thor heard him. Criticism was good; it was constructive. It was Loki’s special sort of encouragement. He could do better.

-

Loki didn’t give back the tunic. It was improper to keep a courting gift if one rejected the courtship. Grown up was the little Jotun boy who didn’t even know what kissing was; Loki knew Asgard’s affairs intimately enough to insult all her politicians, and nothing escaped him; he must have read up on the custom.

So, Thor didn’t have a “no,” exactly, though his next attempt did earn him and his associate some unkind words.

“Who wrote this?” Loki asked, one eyebrow raised in muted reaction to the poem.

“The poet laureate of my father’s court.”

“Fire the man,” said Loki, tucking the scroll into his breast pocket.

-

The poem had been _good,_ all Thor’s friends said so; Loki was really just the sort to put a man’s livelihood at risk to insult Thor – Thor was sure he’d have been delighted if Thor took his suggestion and demanded termination – but damn them both to Hel, Thor wanted him still.

The dagger he next brought Loki was heavily jeweled and wickedly sharp. He thought it was fitting. It would look well dangling from Loki’s belt; the rubies of the hilt matched his eyes and the gold in which they laid matched his preferred accoutrements. And the blade, obviously, was his tongue.

“Is this a threat?” Loki asked, unsheathing the blade and admiring it covetously.

“It’s a gift,” Thor said. Had he forgotten some Jotun custom? Was a presentation of a weapon, even a pretty, ceremonial one, as good as a declaration of war? Loki did not look too worried.

“Then you must not expect anything in return.”

Loki smiled at his new possession, and then at Thor.

-

Thor was still soaked with wine – out of his tunic, toweling off – and quite vexed – he had been doing so well tonight, but then, with Loki, he always thought so until the moment he was not – when there was a knock on his borrowed chamber’s door.

“Enter,” he said, hoping it was Loki, come to apologize for upending the goblet over his head and kiss him better.

It was not. It was Bjarke Stigson, one of his father’s advisors, a man whom Odin trusted to give him council on a great many things because he had lived a great many places.

“My prince,” he said respectfully.

“Hail,” said Thor. “What can I do for you?”

“Actually, your highness, ask what I can do for you.”

“Very well,” Thor said, discarding his soiled towel. “What can you do for me?”

“The very same thing I do for your father: offer my advice in interstellar affairs.”

There was really only one such campaign Thor was involved in. He didn’t try to refuse the help; he sorely needed it. He knew he was being laughed at. Loki was doing the bulk of the laughing, after all.

“And what counsel would you give me?”

“A change of course, your highness. The Jotnar courting traditions are nothing like our own. All you’re doing with your words and gifts is making yourself a fool in Prince Loki’s eyes.”

“So, what must I do, to win him?” Thor had already slain a great dragon for its richly magical scales so he could give them to Loki (Loki had thanked him graciously and dropped his tent flap in Thor’s face) so surely, he could participate in some strange custom.

“It is a test of strength.”

Thor grinned. That was more than doable, perhaps even his specialty. “What form does it take?”

“Ritual combat.”

Thor frowned. “Explain? Is it a contest for dominance?”

“Not inherently, though sometimes it can become one. The tradition has, like many among the Jotnar, practical origin. Their climate is so harsh, and they were once on poor terms with the other realms, with access to few trade routes. Resources were scarce, so taking a mate was not something done lightly. A prospective mate could prove they were more than a foolish, wasteful fancy by demonstrating they were the stronger, and would be able to defend you and your offspring better than you could alone.”

There was a kind of sense to that. It wasn’t so different than an Aesir youth bringing his lover lavish gifts, or a bird building its mate a luxurious nest.

“It’s something of an archaic custom; many younger Jotnar don’t bother with it. They just… get right to things, like younger Aesir. Youth is youth, I suppose. I’m surprised your beloved—” oh, how embarrassing, that the advisor knew what Jotnar customs had fallen out of fashion, but not what Asgardian slang had “—does; he’s never struck me as much of a traditionalist.”

“He isn’t one at all; he only likes to make things hard for me.”

The advisor quirked his lips, as if to say “ah, young love.” The sentiment was embarrassing, but true.

-

Loki took a luxurious amount of time before answering the door to Thor’s knock, but he pulled him inside almost immediately after that.

He was bare to the waist, stripped of his jewelry for the night, wearing only the long skirt that usually peeked out from under his robe.

“Back for more?” he asked. Thor knew better than to joke along, because if he did, Loki would give it to him.

“No, I’ve come to rectify my mistakes.”

“I didn’t know you could do that,” Loki said, smirking, but he was listening.

“I’ve learned some things about Jotunheimr and her culture since we last spoke.”

“Oh? I didn’t think you were much of an anthropologist.”

“I’m not, I confess, but I’m very much willing to play an unfamiliar role for you.”

That got Loki’s attention, if Thor hadn’t had it already. “What are your findings?”

“Jotunheimr of old was an inhospitable place.”

“It is an inhospitable place, still,” Loki said. “Visit for the torturous, long miracle plays performed during the opening ceremonies of the Winter Solstice festival and you shall see what I mean.”

Thor didn’t let Loki’s joke distract him. He was getting very good at navigating Loki’s minefield, and he was about to pierce its heart. “The limited resources left your people unwilling to make silly indulgences.”

“A tradition I keep alive to this day,” Loki said, turning from Thor.

Thor reached out and snatched Loki’s wrist up in his hand.

Loki growled at him, a sound no Aes could make. It loosed a twisting shiver upon Thor’s spine. “Let me go, Odinson.”

“Loki Laufeyjarson,” Thor said, level and formal. “I demand the privilege of a combat, so I might prove to you my worth as a mate.”

Loki stilled his struggling and smiled.

 _Aha!_ Thor thought triumphantly, the last of his miniscule doubt finally shot dead. _So, he is interested, after all. I knew it to be so._

“Now?” he asked softly, tenderly.

Thor felt his heart swell. “Only since it can’t be yesterday.”

“Very well.”

The next thing of Thor’s to swell was his head, for Loki arched a flexible kick and caught Thor’s temple with it.

Thor roared, certainly in pain, but ignited with the lust for battle and the lust for the prize waiting on the other side.

He struck Loki’s shoulder, and the blow sent Loki reeling: reeling and laughing in delight, and he threw himself at Thor with equal and opposite force.

They grappled for a moment before he tackled Loki to the floor but Thor failed to pin his hands, and Loki scratched Thor’s shirt clean open. It seemed like good foreplay, but he kept scratching, and after that it seemed like a good attack.

Thor hissed in pain, and Loki bucked up once, testing, and then again, with enough force to unseat Thor.

He was up in a flash, but Thor lunged after him, grabbed his ankle, and pulled him back to the floor.

They rolled once, twice, a few more times and then another half turn, until Loki came out on top, squeezing his powerful thighs tight around Thor’s waist, tight enough to hurt. “If I _take_ you in this fight, shall _I_ then _take_ you?” he asked.

Not inherently a fight for dominance nor control, but Thor should have known Loki would make it one.

“If you wish it,” Thor said, genuinely, but he didn’t think Loki did, at least not today. Loki rolled his hips with purpose, rubbing his buttocks against Thor’s cock, urging it to rise enough to nestle between them.

Perhaps Loki meant to goad him, mistakenly thinking Thor’s Asgardian sexual mores were as old-fashioned as he was pretending his Jotun ones to be. Thor had never heard of someone fighting dirty with intent to self-sabotage before.

Strange as Loki was, Thor felt his blood sing, and he grabbed at Loki’s shoulders, heaved him off – Loki didn’t go willingly, but it was no matter for Thor to move him – and rose in his wake, grabbing him before he could get his standing balance and slamming him against the wall.

Thor rubbed against him, and Loki arched into the contact, but when he snaked his arms around Thor’s shoulders he didn’t embrace him but clawed at his back viciously.

Thor tried to hold him in place, but the pain mounted just high enough to throw his hold, and Loki slipped from it.

“You haven’t won me yet,” he told Thor, dancing away. His stance was defensive, proof that what he wanted wasn’t a fair fight but a demonstration of Thor’s strength.

He got that in abundance. Thor followed after him, first stalking, self-assured, then pursuing, maddened, swinging at Loki with little finesse, putting more and more of his back into it every time Loki dodged a strike.

But Loki’s luck ran out, or maybe, since it was what he wanted, his luck picked up: Thor got in a mighty blow that winded him, and then he slammed him to the ground and pinned him there before he could catch his breath.

Loki gasped and arched beneath him. His erection nudged Thor’s. “I thought the berserkr rage was just a myth.”

“I have my wits about me, still,” Thor told him. He also thought the berserkr rage was just a myth, but if anyone could rouse it from legend to possess Thor, it would be Loki.

“Well, lose them,” Loki demanded, flipping their position and raining blows upon Thor’s chest.

Thor shielded himself until an opportunity came to grab at Loki’s waist and heave him off. Loki let – yes, definitely allowed – himself be manhandled off of his perch and then tossed across the room.

The impact of the wood floor on his tailbone must have been a great pain, but when he hit, his legs fell open and he smiled like he felt the greatest bliss. “Mm,” he said vaguely.

He didn’t look much more of a threat, but Thor went and pinned him again.

Once Thor had him underneath his thighs, Loki began to struggle anew. Thor suspected it was only to make sure he could keep him trapped.

Thor held Loki’s wrists, though eased up on his body once Loki’s thrashing calmed. “Do you yield?”

“You’re not supposed to ask,” Loki said helpfully, wriggling out from Thor’s carelessly loosened grip.

Loki rolled onto his belly as if he was going to push himself up but he took so long about it that Thor saw it for the ruse it was. If Loki wanted to be taken on hands and knees, Thor could gladly give him that.

Thor put one hand on the small of his back to hold him down, settled between his legs, and ripped the skirt from his hips. It wasn’t his most impressive display of strength of the night, but Loki groaned underneath him anyway.

Thor pulled his cock out of his trousers. He stroked himself a few times, running his other hand gently up the length of Loki’s thigh. Loki, the incorrigible thing, shifted, like he was actually considering getting back up now that he was no longer pinned, so Thor took action to subdue him more totally.

It wasn’t much of a gamble to smack Loki’s ass, and Loki reacted just about the way Thor hoped he would, and perhaps even a little more strongly. He cried out, stopped his struggling, and his head dropped between his heaving shoulders.

Loki expected the second spank, and it made impact with trembling flesh.

“Is this how the Aesir treat their lovers?” he asked, and he didn’t even pretend affront. He sounded like he thought he should have been making better use of all his recent visits to Asgard, and Thor felt a possessive, glad thrill that he’d gotten to Loki first.

“Only those who deserve it.”

Loki held still between each blow, eager for them to fall, and arched his back when they landed. His cock hung thick and full between his legs.

Thor did this for a time before grabbing Loki’s naked ass – bruised indigo, with welts shaped like Thor’s overlapping handprints – kneading powerfully until Loki arched his back, making an offering of himself.

Thor took it: he leaned in between Loki’s cheeks and licked his hole. Loki yowled – did the Jotnar do this? Thor could not remember, or maybe had never been told. If Loki was surprised, he took to it well and quickly – and then pushed back against Thor’s retreating tongue, so Thor gave it to him again, licking and kissing.

Loki was trembling, almost wholly mastered, and he rocked back _hard_ against Thor’s tongue when Thor first slowly dipped inside.

After that, he abandoned caution and tongued Loki’s hole sweetly but eagerly, every few strokes or so pulling out to suck at the pucker and run his tongue along the seam that housed it.

Loki was breathing very heavily, more so than he had when winded from the fight. Thor guessed he might be feeling awfully empty.

“Do you have any oil?” Thor asked him, hoping he did not need to get up and hunt for some.

“Nngh,” Loki said, and it didn’t sound like a spell, but perhaps it was one, for a bottle rolled out of thin air and clacked Thor’s knee.

He picked it up and coated the first finger of his right hand and then used it to spread slickness around Loki’s hole. Loki canted his hips against the touch without reserve as Thor teased at him.

He took too long about it for Loki, clearly, because he lashed out, first with his heel to Thor’s knee, and then with his tongue.

“Fuck me, dammit,” he demanded.

Persuasive. His impatience was catching.

Loki’s hole clenched around nothing, and a few times as Thor slicked up his cock, he thrust his bottom backwards, egging Thor on though his range of movement was limited, pinned in Thor’s grasp as he was.

Thor entered him, one long, plunging stroke, and Loki clung tight all around him. Within, he was hot as any Aes – or Elf, or Vanir – Thor had ever had, and Thor would never have guessed that the contrast of heat hugging his cock and cool skin on his thighs when he bottomed out could be so heady.

There was a lot about Loki he would never have guessed would be so heady, had he not met the man, but he had, so they were both quite doomed.

Thor stroked his thumb along Loki’s briskly cold flank, giving him a courteous grace period of adjustment, but Loki scorned his generosity now as much as he’d scorned it in their courtship dance.

“Move,” he growled, getting things started for Thor by arching away and then impaling himself again.

Thor drew back and then thrust in, his balls slapping Loki’s when he made impact as far in as he could go.

Loki took his cock beautifully. Thor fucked him roughly, thrusting in and out, hands digging into Loki’s flesh. His eyes fell closed, but even without the sight of Loki throwing himself back onto his cock like a wave on a wrecking ship, the experience was not diminished.

Loki’s moans rose as Thor’s speed increased, but Thor’s force still did not satisfy.

“ _Harder_ ,” Loki cried, more desperate but more of an absolute order than the last time it had been given.

Thor complied, pounding into Loki. He gripped his waist tightly. He didn’t know what amount of force was appropriate for such an end, but he wondered whether there would be indigo bruises there come morning – _hoped_ there would be indigo bruises there come morning. He dug in his hands extra hard; Loki seemed to love it.

Loki tossed his head back. He’d never looked – nor sounded – happier.

Thor put his hand around Loki’s cock and gave him one good tug and Loki came all over Thor’s hand, tossing his hips back against Thor’s enthusiastically.

On a whim, Thor stuffed his fingers into Loki’s mouth, and they were well-received: Loki immediately began to suck on them, letting them muffle the moans that his orgasm had not quieted.

That was enough for Thor: with a shout, he buried himself all the way inside Loki and came so hard he nearly blacked out. Loki clenched around him, undulating his hips as Thor’s cock softened inside of him.

Loki collapsed down onto his stomach as soon as Thor pulled out, Thor’s seed dripping onto the floor below. Thor should get him a cloth, but Loki didn’t seem to mind, and the idea of lying beside Loki was too inviting.

He rolled over to face Thor.

Thor brushed his lips against Loki’s, then drew back, hesitant, unsure if Loki even wanted such a thing.

“Kiss me,” Loki urged. “Let’s make this a very thorough cultural exchange.”

Thor grinned and complied.

If Loki had had members of other races, they had not been overly affectionate with him, Thor thought. The kiss was a mess: Loki’s teeth played far too prominently and his suction on Thor’s lower lip was far too harsh. Thor wondered how much of that was inexperience and how much of that was simply Loki. Were Loki Asgardian, he imagined his kiss might have much more finesse, but be just as wild, still.

So, while Thor did his best to guide it, he did not try to gentle it: he let his mouth be taken and his lips be gnawed, and he gave as good as he got.

And he got so well that his cock began to rouse again. Loki noticed, and tittered like he was drunk from the thorough fucking.

Thor nudged at his hip hopefully. “So, this ritual. Is it one-time or do we repeat it?”

Loki gave him a flat look. “What kind of waste of precious energy would it have been for primitive, early nomads living on a glacial plain to tussle like that before every coupling? I think your stupidity amazes me more than your strength. In fact, just for that idiotic question I think I _shall_ make you fight me again each time you want to bed me.”

“I’ll win,” Thor assured him.

Loki smiled. “If I wasn’t sure of that, I wouldn’t have set the condition.”

**Author's Note:**

> Theme song of this fic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iol0B-clFFM
> 
>  
> 
> [Thotki.tumblr.com](https://thotki.tumblr.com)


End file.
